An interesting study about the effectiveness of online marketing versus traditional print and TV advertising was recently released “across the pond” in the United Kingdom. The Internet Advertising Bureau, the internet marketing industry’s trade association in the U.K., released a “Brand Engagement” study that shows online advertising for retail brands is the biggest driver for brand awareness in the current medias mix, “driving 40% of brand engagement, compared with press (31%) and TV (19%).”

These numbers highlight the overall effectiveness of relatively low cost internet advertising versus traditional media to raise product and brand awareness, when one considers the return on investment of the much smaller advertising budgets for online marketing. “The average online ad spend for all five brands in the study was just 2.5% of total media budget,” notes the IAB, “which suggests that internet advertising – which delivered 40% of brand engagement across all communications – is around 16 times more effective than the monetary investment would suggest.” The IAB’s research results regarding the effectiveness of online branding in the British retail sector were in line with, or exceeded, similar results in the British automotive, beverage and personal care sectors.

The research from the IAB in the U.K. seems equally applicable in North America, where the increasing sophistication of internet users and ever-improving technology is a driver which is increasing both internet use and the effectiveness of online marketing.

Yet, while study after study reports the increasing effectiveness of online marketing campaigns and internet advertising as marketing tools, as with any newly emerging technology, there is a lag in companies fully adopting the technology’s potential. “Whilst consumers’ online shopping spend continues to grow year-on-year,” notes Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the IAB, “there still remains a great discrepancy in terms of how much retailers are spending on their internet communications. We hope that this latest Brand Engagement study will help retail advertisers fully appreciate the brand-building capabilities of online, and in turn increase the medium’s share of their marketing budgets.”

Online marketing and Internet advertising are being recognized as a real and significant means to tap into the growing presence of consumers online. It is now recognized that despite a drop in U.S. consumer confidence and a none-too-healthy U.S. economy, there will nonetheless be double-digit growth in the money businesses are spending to advertise their products and services online.

Online advertising will grow by 20% this year, increasing from $19.9 billion in 2007 to $23.8 billion by the end of 2008, according to the latest market research released by JupiterResearch. This, at a time when a slumping U.S. economy is dragging down economic growth across much of North America and Europe. Traditional advertising, meanwhile, is forecast to grow only 4% in 2008.

These growth numbers highlight the importance of online marketing and Internet advertising to a burgeoning e-commerce sector. The current issue of Newsweek features an article on “A Second Coming of the Dot-Coms” which traces the growing shift of real and not speculative dollars online. Quite rightly, Newsweek attributes the resurrection of e-commerce in large part to the fact that “the majority (or at least a sizable minority) of the population in key markets like the United States, Europe and Asia now has access to broadband connections.”

The double-digit growth in ad spending online should highlight the importance of having an effective online marketing platform for businesses large and small. Without a planned online marketing strategy and a web site that is optimized so that search engines like Google can find and read it, small businesses and growth businesses cannot compete online. Large companies are pouring millions into Internet advertising campaigns that are dominating the bandwidth consumers are tapping into with sophisticated web sites and platforms that use the latest and most effective search engine optimization techniques to dominate their markets. Fortunately, the Internet is nothing if not democratic and small companies and growth businesses can effectively market their products and services and find their niche online using the same techniques and strategies as the largest companies and online players.

How effective is online marketing in driving business to your company? Just how important is it to have an effective website that customers and potential customers can find and use to research the products and services you sell? Very effective - and very important - according to survey results recently released by Opinion Research Corporation.

Almost two-thirds of the respondents (61%) polled in June of 2008 reported “consulting online reviews, blogs and other sources of online customer feedback before purchasing a new product or service.” Search engines like Google or Yahoo!, quite naturally, were the preferred method for respondents conducting online searches.

These results from Opinion Research Corp. confirm recently released consumer numbers from JupiterResearch that show consumers spend $6 on offline purchases influenced by their online research for every dollar that they spend online. An effective online marketing presence in the form of a web page or website that is optimized so that search engines like Google can find and index your business site is quickly becoming a business must as more and more consumers are doing their window shopping online. Effective online marketing and Internet advertising are now business critical issues, particularly for large and small companies dealing in products and services in highly competitive marketplaces.

Opinion Research Corporation ranked the product and services categories that were researched the most online by their respondents in the following order:

Travel/Recreation/Leisure 82%
Electronic goods 80%
Household products/services 66%
Clothing 55%
Automotive 55%
Personal care 40%
Food 24%

June 24, 2008 - The growing importance of online marketing to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) was re-emphasized again today in a new report released by JupiterResearch. The report emphasizes the growing importance of online marketing not just for SMBs conducting their business online or heavily invested in e-commerce, but for all SMBs.

The numbers show that consumers’ online research habits are having a huge spillover effect onto their offline shopping habits. “For every $1 online users spent online in 2007,” JupiterResearch notes, “they spent roughly $6 on off-line purchases that were influenced by online research.”

While a storefront presence is still necessary to capture foot traffic for most SMBs, the exponential rise in the number of potential customers using Internet search – particularly, local search and mobile search – to make products and services choices should make capturing web traffic a similar priority for SMBs. The JupiterResearch numbers show that more and more consumers are “Windows” shopping, as well as window shopping.

The growing numbers of consumers who are surfing the Internet to make their product choices indicate that Internet advertising and establishing an effective online marketing presence are already business-critical issues of importance to all SMBs – and that importance is only likely to rise.

Exploiting consumer demand for videocsting and online videos on YouTube is the next challenge for those in the online marketing and Internet advertising industries.

Media polling firm, Ipsos-MediaCT, reports a drop in the percentage of time active Internet users – i.e., those who have ever downloaded a video from the internet - spend watching video on TV from 75% in February 2007 to 70% in February 2008. This is highly significant when one considers that “about half of all Internet users aged 12 and up have streamed a video file online in the past 30 days,” according to Ipsos’ research.

As YouTube’s owner, Google moves to capitalize on the video sharing site it purchased for $1.65 billion in 2005, its investment is paying off. Forbes.com, the online branch of the magazine that specializes in tracking wealth and riches, estimates that YouTube’s billion-plus views per day will garner Google $200 million in revenue in 2008, and a further $350 million in 2009. There may be even more upside to this, as Google moves to allow its “content partners”, primarily indie film makers, to upload 1 gigabyte video clips the size of feature length films to YouTube. Longer clips will mean more advertising opportunities and additional revenue.

The growing importance of video as a tool and medium for online marketing and Internet advertising is seen in the search results on the main search engines where YouTube videos are beginning to consistently rank on relevant key word terms. The rise of video and the importance of YouTube as an online advertising platform is only likely to expand as Google has made figuring out how to monetize and make YouTube pay off one of its top goals for 2008.

Recent Canadian newspaper coverage highlights the growing impact that mobile search will have on online marketing as stories about the release of Apple’s new 3G iPhone and Roger’s Communication’s Inc.’s proposed new cellphone plans hit the wires.

It is expected that it will be easier and cheaper for Canadians to conduct mobile searches on the Internet from their mobile phones as Roger’s Communications is set to roll out new mobile broadband packages to support the “slew of new data-heavy mobile devices” that Roger’s is set to release, reports the National Post.

Of course, one of these “new data-heavy mobile devices” is the latest model of Apple’s 3G iPhone, that Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, unveiled to the world on June 10th. “The new, thinner phone will go on sale in 22 countries on July 11 and run on third-generation, or 3G, wireless networks that deliver Internet content at least two times faster than the prior model,” according to Mr. Jobs, who publicly unveiled the new iPhone for the first time at the Apple’s developer conference held in San Francisco. Roger’s has secured Canadian rights to the new iPhone when it is released in Canada, the United States and around the world on July 11th.

The ability of consumers to easily conduct mobile searches online from their handheld devices will be greatly enhanced with the next-generation iPhone, and companies – from small businesses to the largest multinationals – are taking note and preparing themselves for what is predicted to be a new wave of customers increasinbly using mobile search and local search to locate the products and services they are looking for. These developments only highlight the importance of online marketing to a company’s bottom-line as Apple, RIM, Nokia and their competitors roll out new products to tap consumer demand for mobile search capabilities.

As online marketing and advertising begin to outstrip traditional advertising media - TV, radio and print -  as the medium that will drive customers to their office or storefront (whether that is a digital online office or storefront on a company’s web page, or the old-fashioned ‘bricks-and-mortar’ variety) businesses, large and small, are grappling with how to advertise and market their products and services online and what is the most effective way to do this. 

David Wei, CEO for Alibaba.com, a leading website providing business-to-business (or B2B) networking and connectivity, has observed that, “Going global has never been easier and more affordable for a small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME), especially from the relative comfort of one’s own factory, shop or home office.”  

Mr. Wei notes that, the “Internet has ushered in new tools to bring trading partners together using search engines, portals and online marketplaces.”  Mr. Wei notes that online marketing and B2B marketplaces like Alibaba.com are replacing traditional marketing venues like  trade shows, catalogues and trade associations, just as internet advertising is gradually replacing traditional print, TV and radio as source for advertising placements.

 Importantly, Alibaba.com’s CEO, points out the choice that all businesses, particularly small-to-medium sized enterprises (or SMEs), must face when taking their advertising and marketing campaigns online, or starting up a fresh marketing campaign, is whether to channel time, money and effort into paid advertising and marketing (the banner ads, and pay-per-click sponsored ads on Googl or Yahoo! etc.), or whether to invest those resources in organic marketing.

Pay-per-click has its place and a company can bid and pay for advertising spots, just like it would do for TV and other old media ads, but pay-per-click has its limitations.   “A search engine is more consumer-traffic driven with no budget guarantee,” Mr. Wei suggests, “so costs can accumulate without any reasonable assurance of sales. There is also a serious global issue of click fraud, whereby competitors click repeatedly to increase your pay-per-click advertising costs.”  ”At this time,” Mr. Wei says, “there is no known solution that can eliminate 100% of click fraud.”  With pay-per-click it can thus become difficult to know that you are paying for what you get.

The alternative to pay-per-click is to market and advertise online using the internet’s organic search capabilities to get your products and services noticed and ranked at the top of the search engines’ results page. There is nothing like having your site appear “above-the-fold”, so to speak, on the Google results page for the key words that describe your business to drive sales. While this is not “paid advertising” per se, there are definite costs in terms of the aforementioned resources of “time, money and effort” that an SME will need to expend building an effective online marketing campaign organically.

Mr Wei’s advice for small-to-medium sized enterprises is, that “it is best to have someone in-house with keyword marketing expertise. Otherwise, you should consider using marketing firms which have a proven success rate of getting companies to rank higher in search results.”

Sound advice. But even if an SME tries to build an in-house capability for online marketing, how can the business influencer or decision-maker be assured that the person they are looking to hire has the search engine optimization expertise to successfully orchestrate a full online marketing campagn, particularly if one’s marketing mix is to use both pay-per-click and organic search engine optimization? The answer may be to test the online marketing waters first and take your online marketing and online advertising campaigns to a company whose search engine optimization specialists have organic and pay-per-click experience.

Reading the marketing and advertising trade journal Advertising Age, I was struck by how the comments made by AdAge’s Guest Columnist, Beau Fraser, the managing director of ad firm Gate Worldwide, which were directed at big clients and the advertising and marketing mega-firms and boutiques that serve them apply in some ways to small businesses and their online marketing people. The piece is a bit of rant, really . . . and maybe justifiably so, but I know next-to-nothing of the Madison Avenue-world of advertising. What Mr. Fraser says about advertising at its best, however, - “Advertising provokes thought, differentiates commodity products and helps consumers make better-informed decisions.” - rings true for the product and client services produced by the search engine optimization and online marketing specialists I work for.

Mr. Fraser’s guest column suggesta there are four points that will help big clients allow their big-firm advertising shops serve their maketing interests better. (If any of my bosses’ clients happen to read this, these comments are not directed at you - so don’t take offense. Nor do I think Beau Fraser intended offense for anyone, merely hard-won constructive criticism, all in the name of putting out a better product, and creating a more invigorated climate for both client and ad agency.)

Here are Mr. Fraser’s points transposed, I suppose, with a view to how working with small business SEO amd online marketing specialists can boost the profile, revenue and productivity of small, mid-size and growing businesses lthat rely increasingly on the cyber-traffic to their web pages as well asthe foot-traffic past their storefronts:

1. Avoid treating online marketing “as a pit stop, not as a profession”. - I’m new to this on-line marketing business, formerly having been a lawyer. Yet, even with the staggering amount of reading that was necessary in that racket (yes, racket!) to keep abreast of not only my area of specialization, but the state of the law in general, I am blown away by the amount of information my bosses have to absorb in order to keep abreast with and tap into the best practices in this ever-evolving field. When undertaking online marketing oneself, or when working with your consultants or contractors, I think its essential to treat a business’ online storefront as every bit as important as a retail storefront. Its gotta be clean, persuasive, inviting and intriguing to attract digital foot-traffic and keep them around long enough so you can make your sales pitch and let the person who found your site decide they want the products or services you are offering, Cleaning up a derelict storefront, opening up a new neighbourhood boutique or creating an online presence takes time and effort. Time in the pits optimizing the appearance and efficiency of your site is not time that is spent off the race track where you are competing for positioning and sales. Nobody is going to lap you while you clean up your digital storefront. Quite the contrary.
2. Do Not “Lack Courage” - Change is, or always can be, intimidating - and the pace of change in online marketing is blistering . . . and increasing. (See point 1, above, regarding how much time my bosses have to spend keeping abreast of online technology’s ever-burgeoning possibilities.) Mr. Fraser makes the valid point that clients can have a tendency to “make decisions based on sacred cows, those rules, standards or formulas that are blindly followed because ‘that’s the way its always been done.” Trust in the ‘pros from Dover’ you’ve hired to help you enter the online marketing stream and foster the ’stick-to-it-iveness’ to wait for organic, growing results, some of which may have what is referred to as a long-tail. While there are plenty of fly-by-night SEO operators who can deliver a quick boost to the top of Google’s rankings through quick-fix, questionable means, ranking consistently on the top pages of the search engines requires both short and longer-term efforts to build the web site configurations, content and connectivity. And some of these efforts may seem counterintuitive to how a ‘bricks-and-mortar’ storefront builds traffic and generates sales revenue. It takes courage to take the leap and perseverance to see past the quick fix to the end of the long-tail results.
3. “Get Aligned” with Your SEO Team - To produce optimal results in the search engine optimization game, there has to be a mutuality of interest, where client and provider share the mutual goal of creating a digital footprint that will stand out. Trusting in each other, and having a shared goal and belief in the process, product and progress of results is essential.
4. Make Sure ‘Decision Makers’ are In Touch - For the quick response to changing markets and marketing conditions its critical that a small business’ ultimate decision-makers on matters of site performance, optimization and functionality are in touch with the vision and plan of the SEO, online marketing ‘decision maker’ who is handling your work. In fast-changing times, fast action is most often called for. You don’t want to be sidelined, or have your site sidelined, while waiting for site changes and functions to be approved and then revised pages uploaded through your host server. As technologies emerge evermore quickly and evolve evermore rapidly with new online, internet marketing tools being deployed on a daily or near daily basis, and with emerging new paradigms in business-to-business and business-to-client communications, not only a shared vision but also a fast-action client/marketer response is required.

If you are just entering the online stream, so to speak, don’t hesitate to get your feet wet. Take it from a ‘newbie’ - it’s invigorating. But get with experienced, knowledgable and adaptive specialists who will not only be able tooptimize your site, but will be able to keep you abreast of online marketing developments and the latest internet marketing and search engine optimization techniques as they emerge, whatever these may be this week - or . . . more importantly . . . next week.

May 12, 2008 - Internet marketing sites are “a-Twitter” - forgive the pun - with talk of recent moves by Facebook, MySpace, and now Google, that will enable small business websites to tap into the potential for online marketing through the social networking media. Online marketing advantages that were formerly enjoyed by only the largest of sites with reams of resources and technical expertise are poised to become features that savvy small businesses, growth companies and mid-size players can easily tap into.

Today, Google announced it is rolling out a new Google FriendConnect feature that will easily allow small business web sites to let their clients and customers interact right on their web site without ever leaving their page. According to David Glazer, Google’s Director of Engineering, “Many sites aren’t explicitly social and don’t necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other.”

The potential for small business marketing online through building customer loyalty, brand marketing and driving revenue is fantastic. Imagine the potential for a local wedding planner to enable bride, groom, families and friends to interact online, sharing their ideas with each other to maximize what they would like to experience at an upcoming wedding -and being able to purchase the products and services online, onsite to realize those ideas - all without leaving the planners site. As potential customers interact in brainstorming ideas for one upcoming wedding, they will be able to invite their family and friends onto the site to discuss and get feedback on their own upcoming events. Fantastic ‘long-tail’ prospects await entrepeneurial small businesses that tap into the emerging new technical capabilities Google, Yahoo!, Facebook etc. are letting the little guy into!

Google will preview its new features s that will allow them to make the Web 2.0 world of “any app, any site, any friends” a reality for website owners at its Campfire One, Googleplex.

My new boss is now officially as jaded as the lawyer I used to be. . . . On my way out yesterday, I poked my head in his office and asked him to look over an article I’d posted on eZine.com for a client, to see if I’d gotten the right mix of keywords – not too many, not too few – in the article’s content. He opened the article and looked up at me with “You’ve got to be kidding me!” written all over him. “To be honest,” he said, “I look at this and all I see is blah, blah, blah . . . link!” “Wow,” jaded, I thought. The article, its content and length was more than he was used to seeing in SEO land, apparently.

And that seems to be the critical balance in SEO copywriting. Yes, we all want to get content up there on the web that has the all-important incoming link to our site, but how to best achieve this while getting the double-boost of attracting readers to the site, blog or social media space you are writing for? After all, in the short-term link building gets the page ranking boost you and/or your clients are looking for – but it’s short-lived. I think my bosses and I agree, and we wouldn’t be the only ones in the industry, that social media marketing – MySpace, Facebook, del.icio.us, dig etc. – is the next wave to ride. But how best to ride it and turn it into a strategy that pays for itself and for our clients? After all, almost by definition users on social media sites - perhaps with the exception of the SEO-types I now rub shoulders with, but I know( or at least hope), that they too tap into what is out there on the internet for fun and frolic) – do not want to be bothered with in your face, blatant marketing content. What’s a poor hack to do?

I think the answer must lie with almost the very first thing I heard about SEO when I first interviewed for this gig. “Content is King!” With Google still trying to figure out how to monetize its social marketing phenomenon - YouTube, all of us seem to be focusing on how we can utilize social marketing media to boost the page ranking on the search engines. What we seem to forget, as I see it as an admitted SEO newbie, is that the blogs like this that we publish are already social media. Readers come to them not only for the information that they want, but to be informed by it. That’s communication, an inherent social medium.

As I write articles for the directories, content for web pages and blog blurbs like this one, I try to keep in mind that their is an end user out there who will, I hope (Are you out there?) read what it is I am writing and feel motivated to take some action as a result . . . post a comment, link to the site, return to see what is new in a week or two’s time, link to my client’s site. That is how the internet grew, and I feel that all of us in SEO should bear that in mind while we’re trying to make a buck or two for ourselves and our clients.

Google faces a great challenge in figuring out how to turn a buck, or bigger buck, on YouTube. Google CEO, Eric Schmidt was candid about that during his recent interview on CNBC. Ultimately, however, if you want to put readers eyes in front of the advertising, products or services you are marketing on line, whether for clients or through affiliate marketing, you’d best be assuring that the product that is going to capture their eye is also going to capture their imagination. Down in the caverns of Google Labs and Google Research, I’m sure they have this uppermost in mind. Good thing they have the cash to back up the imaginative ways they will undoubtedly come up with for marketing their products, ads and services through YouTube, which is becoming greater asset for them every day, if they can only figure out how to capitalize on its social marketing potential. I for one will be keeping an eye on how that plays out how to do the same on a smaller scale in the social marketing milieu the rest of us small fry swim in.